The White House Correspondents’ Association dinner is D.C.’s night to worship the cult of celebrity.

But for the staff of the Washington Hilton, it’s game day.

The dinner requires months of planning, heightened security and an army of staff to pull off the most demanding event hosted by the hotel all year. All while dodging movie stars wandering through the kitchen to use the staff bathroom.

“Definitely, security makes it challenging, but it’s the sheer volume of how many people are in the building,” says Gordon Marr, a 33-year veteran of the Hilton. Currently the hotel’s director of food and beverage, Marr was also the executive chef for a number of years, so he’s seen his share of correspondents’ dinners. “The lobby’s packed full,” he said on a recent visit to the vast underground complex where the preparations take place. “The hotel is full, the bars are full, I mean the whole place is just maximum.”

Banquet director Kevin O’Shea, an affable Irishman who has been involved with the dinner for most of his 17 years at the Hilton, estimates that it takes more than 675 staff members to execute the main dinner and all the surrounding events each year.

“We’ve already started our process months ago,” he said. Anticipation is the name of the game, and the Hilton staff has it down to a science.

For example, Atlabachew Aklilu has two jobs — assistant director of food and beverage and “King of Bow Ties.”

“For the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, I do up to, say, 15 bow ties,” he said. “They call me and it doesn’t matter what I am doing — I go to the room because I know how important it is.”

He also keeps tuxedo studs, cuff links and a number of other accessories on hand. “In 2009, it was Tom Cruise. He forgot the studs,” Aklilu continues. “And that day, to be honest with you, I did not have any except my own, so I gave him mine!”

That year he also wore another hat — restroom escort. Like other A-listers, Demi Moore and then-husband Ashton Kutcher had requested to use the employee facilities in the kitchen rather than having to go in and out through security.

“What impressed me the most at that time was that I wanted to make sure the bathroom was clean and send somebody to clean it up,” Aklilu said. “But she said ‘no, no, no, I’ll clean it myself, don’t worry.’ So I thought that was quite impressive, and I told her that simplicity is just the highest level of sophistication. She liked what I said, and the next thing I know I was on her Twitter!”

And while Aklilu is heading up special teams, Executive Chef Andre Coté, whose first night at the Hilton was the correspondents’ dinner nine years ago — “I was thinking what the hell did I get myself into?” — is quarterbacking the menu, including variations to accommodate nearly every dietary restriction.

“It’s the little obscure diets or requests — ‘I can’t eat crustaceans’ — man, I didn’t think of that one,” he said in his office just off his enormous kitchen and only steps away from the ballroom where the dinner takes place. “And then it’s the ‘no legumes’ — you’re in the middle of feeding 2,600 people and you’re going down the menu thinking ‘OK, did I put any legumes in that?’”

Serving the food requires a whole other squad, and its captain is Charlie Ragusa. At 82, he’s the oldest and most experienced member of the staff. He started in 1965, the year the hotel opened, and has worked every White House Correspondents’ Dinner since 1968, when it moved to the Hilton.

“I love my job, I like meeting people,” he said. “I get bored easily, so I like the change, the variety. I like to see who’s coming, who’s going. I’m here to help anybody, whatever they need. I’ll do anything for them, it’s just part of my life and it gives me something to look forward to.”

Ragusa, who learned his craft from veterans of the venerable Waldorf-Astoria and Miami’s Fontainebleau, is tasked with making sure his legions of waiters are up to snuff. Think the discipline, precision and attention to detail of Downton Abbey’s Mr. Carson, but in the body of your slightly irreverent Italian great-uncle who is fun to have a drink with.

“Kevin [O’Shea] will have a pre-shift meeting to explain the menu,” he said, “and I’ll give them my overall Vince Lombardi-type thing.”

Indeed, the White House Correspondents’ Dinner is the Hilton staff’s equivalent of the Super Bowl. “The staff are always excited about it,” O’Shea said. “The whole red carpet, the whole media around it, and the fact that you wake up the next morning and ‘bang!’ it’s right in your face.”

Coté noted that some of his international staff, particularly those here on a one-year training program, get especially excited. “For them, they’re calling home two weeks prior, saying ‘I’m feeding the president in a few weeks!’”

“But even with some of my folks, whether they’ve been here for 20 years or two years, you can see it in their eye when they know the president is coming. They’re a little crisper, which is good to see.”

As for how he feels about it: “It is a great honor, at least to a chef,” he said. “It’d be like cooking for a chef and having him do nothing but rave about your food. To me, it’s an honor anytime you can feed the president.”

But when it comes to planning the menu, it’s not just the president Coté has to impress. Several months ahead of the event, he prepares a tasting dinner for WHCA officers and board members, who select the final menu from several appetizer, entreé and dessert options.

Coté’s favorite among menus he’s prepared for the dinner is 2010’s local and sustainable feast, when the entire event went with a greener theme.

“The amount of time and energy that went into finding all of the products was really a challenge,” he said as he reminisced about the experience. “There was a local Maryland crab claw, and we literally had to call 22 or 23 different purveyors to try and get that amount for that exact time.”

“And then we had pea shoots and the grower called a week before and said ‘well, I might be about 500 short,’ and all of a sudden you start calling everybody, all the way to California, trying to find pea shoots for 500 people.”

According to O’Shea, preparing for this dinner — as well as the hundreds of other banquets the staff hosts each year — has changed significantly over the years. “People are getting more educated with food,” he said. “Everybody’s a chef now.”

Coté embraces the challenge. “I love learning something new,” he said. “I hate vegan food, but as a chef it intrigues me about what I can do and how I can do it for 800 people and make it taste good. But my favorite food is probably when I feed 2,600 people and I don’t hear one complaint after dinner. That’s why I cook. I cook for them.”

But does he hear from the celebrities? Nope. “I guess I’m doing something wrong,” Coté said.

“To be honest, I’m usually running around with my head chopped off thinking of something else I didn’t think of. Three years ago I had just left, and within two minutes of my leaving and making my way down the ramp to get out of the hotel, supposedly there were 50 or 60 celebrities here just outside of my office.”

O’Shea remembered that night. “They go in through the kitchen, so they know where the kitchen is and that it’s convenient to the ballroom.”

His favorite celebrity encounter was in 2002: “The Secret Service had just done a big sweep of the ballroom and just released it back to us. And we hear a huge knock at the outside doors.”

“And it was the whole Osbourne family. I guess they didn’t want to go to the receptions. They just wanted to go in and get to their table. So, Secret Service was called in and everything was approved, and they were allowed to come in.”

“We had 261 empty tables, and one table full with Ozzy Osbourne and his whole family. It was quite amusing.”

That night, Osbourne received a presidential shout-out from George W. Bush and promptly rose to his feet, jumped on his chair and blew kisses at the president.

Asked if he has any other stories like that, O’Shea demurred. “Not to that level of madness,” he said. “But it’s always fun seeing folks get ripped apart in the ballroom. I mean, we were there to see Donald Trump getting absolutely creamed.”

And he always makes sure to pop into the ballroom to watch the comedian hosts. “Every year, that’s the highlight of the whole night. Dinner’s over, we’re done with, so we can just enjoy.”

“[Jay] Leno has always been a champion. Wanda Sykes was absolutely fabulous — she just brought down the house.”

“And then you had the opposite, like [Stephen] Colbert, who went completely ‘zoom,’ over everybody’s head.”

“And we had the Scottish guy, Craig Ferguson, he completely freaked out at his rehearsal and we actually had to empty the ballroom. So we literally had to take 250 bodies out of the ballroom. I was like ‘you’ve got 10 minutes because we’ve got things to do!’ But he turned out to be a champion that night and everybody loved him.”

Of course, the biggest celebrity sighting of the night is always the president. “I met the president, Obama, and his wife once — for like 15 seconds,” he recalls. “And I met President Bush once, and he sent me a nice letter which my mother has hanging up on her wall.”

Inevitably, though, it’s Ragusa who has longest list of celebrity encounters. He’s met every president the hotel has hosted.

Favorite first ladies? “Mrs. Clinton. She was a darling, a sweetheart, and she recognized people. And Laura Bush, she was very pleasant, smiling, and greeted everybody.”

He also considers former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta a pal. “He’s a nice, Italian guy from California. He knows me and he recognizes me, and we talk. Very good guy.”

Others he’s bumped into over the years include George Clooney, Robert DeNiro, Tony Curtis, Larry King, Betty White and Morgan Freeman. Yet that doesn’t make him a celebrity expert, since he once mistook Sharon Osbourne for Reba McIntyre — “I said to myself, my God, that’s Reba!”

He was most nostalgic about John F. Kennedy Jr. “He would never sit down. He would always stay on the balcony east coming in the doors and he would never sit. He would talk and there was always a crowd of people.” With a wistful look in his eye, Ragusa added, “John John, he was a good one. I felt so bad when he passed.”

At the end of the night, when all the jokes have been told, the plates have been cleared and the last famous face has left the ballroom, each member of the staff has a way of winding down.

“I get very drunk,” O’Shea said. “I go to the nearest pub possible.”

Coté takes stock of the evening. “I usually will sit in my office for 15 minutes afterward asking myself what went well, what didn’t, where do I have to pay more attention next time?”

And Aklilu? “You know what I do? I go back to the ballroom when all the house men and people are gone and it’s completely empty, and I say to myself, ‘if only these walls could talk.’”

Elizabeth Meyer blogs on food at ifoodyou.wordpress.com. Follow her on Twitter: @ifoodyou.“